2017 Mazda CX-5 vs Mitsubishi Outlander

What's the difference?

The Mazda CX-5 was a genuine phenomenon. It pretty much came out of nowhere and knocked off a few cars we previously thought had an unassailable grasp on the Australian SUV budget.

Even more extraordinary was the fact the stylish CX-5 came from a company that had given us a fairly bland decade of cars, after a flourish in the late '90s descended into a series of dull boxes (although the 3 did signal a revival).

I drove a first-gen CX-5 late in its life and found it hard to believe it needed replacing. But in 2017 that's exactly what Mazda did. Fresh sheetmetal, lots of detail work, and a new interior were all dropped on to a lightly updated chassis to give us the second-generation CX-5.

And a lot faces ended up buried in hands at other car companies because it turns out Mazda did a smashing job second time around.

Mitsubishi's plug-in hybrid Outlander is officially the best-selling electric vehicle in Australia. Though to be fair, that's like saying Blockbuster is the country's best-performing video store. It doesn't mean much if nobody is noticing, and the Outlander PHEV isn't exactly flying off the shelves.

But that's no fault of the plug-in Outlander - it's sold more 120,000 units globally since its launch in 2014. It's just that Australia's taste for electric vehicles is lacklustre, and the absence of meaningful government support isn't helping. Or, in the words of Mitsubishi's own executives, "Sales in Australia are still in an infancy period…but we're hopeful."

MORE: Read the full Mitsubishi Outlander 2017 review

Since its launch in 2014, the hybrid Outlander has moved around 1650 units here (substantially less than the Prius, which managed almost that many last year alone, but a quirk of the official classification system ensures Mitsubishi's PHEV is classified as an EV rather than a hybrid), which is but a drop in the regular Outlander's petrol-powered ocean, with the conventional models selling more than eight times that number every single year.

But Mitsubishi is hoping this 2017 update will go some way to changing all that, adding a pure EV mode that will allow you to waft about town using nothing but power from the twin electric motors, and tweaking the acceleration and handling for when you're in the mood to burn some fossil fuels.

So, is that enough to attract buyers to the plug-in Outlander like moths to the flicker of an electric candle?